Looking for a free eCommerce website builder? See how to create a free eCommerce website with WordPress in under 20 Minutes. Just follow the steps in this article.
WordPress is the best platform to create a free eCommerce website. In this article, we shall see how to build a free eCommerce website from scratch using WordPress without having to spend any money and without any coding; the quickest and easiest way possible.
To build a free eCommerce website you need a free eCommerce website builder and with the WordPress platform, you get a free eCommerce website builder called WooCommerce. It is very easy to create an online shopping store on WordPress using WooCommerce.
Before building the website, you need to
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To learn about WordPress e-commerce hosting, you can read our article on Getting Domain, Hosting, and WordPress installation.
Once you have a live website, you can follow the steps in this article to create your eCommerce website.
In the WordPress platform, we mainly use 2 types of software known as Themes and Plugins.
It deals with how your web store looks. You can have only one active theme for one web store. There are many free eCommerce themes available so pick a theme you like for your free eCommerce website.
Plugins add functionality or features to your web store. You may need to add some plugins like checkout plugin, Wishlist plugin etc., to add more functionality other than what WooCommerce free eCommerce site builder gives you. But WooCommerce is more than enough for now.
The quickest and easiest way to create a free eCommerce website is by using the following WordPress tools – Astra free WordPress theme and plugins such as WooCommerce (free eCommerce website builder), Elementor, and Astra Starter Sites plugins. We shall see how to create a free eCommerce website using these tools.
As I have mentioned already, there are many free themes and plugins in WordPress. But making full use of them takes some time to learn. As a beginner, you don’t need to spend that much time launching your first eCommerce store.
The first thing you need to do is install your desired theme because it affects the overall appearance of your website. To install the Astra free theme,
Now you have successfully installed a theme for your eCommerce site. It’s time to install the plugins. The most important plugin we need now is Astra Starter Sites Plugin. This plugin gives us a list of free eCommerce website templates that can be readily imported so that we don’t have to create an eCommerce website from scratch. To install this plugin,
Now that we have activated the Astra Starter Sites plugin, you can import a website of your choice. To do so,
Hurrah! You have created a free eCommerce website that is fully functional in a matter of a few minutes! Now you just have to change the settings, and add your products to your website and your online shopping website is ready for business.
You can install WooCommerce from your WordPress Dashboard (back-end). Or you can download the file from here.
WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin that gives the core eCommerce functions for your store. After importing the Starter site, go to the WooCommerce settings and give your personalized settings for your stores like your Email, Payment options, Accounts, Taxes, Shipping, etc.,
You will find a “Product” menu on the dashboard. Here you can Add and Edit your Items, Images, Description, etc.,
It takes some time to learn but once you have learned it, WooCommerce becomes very easy to use, and you can manage thousands of products and millions of customers with WooCommerce.
Elementor is the best page builder plugin and along with the WooCommerce plugin, it is most definitely the best eCommerce website builder. Elementor helps you to edit all of the pages of your website including your product pages, all from the Visual editor(WYSIWYG). You can design your pages in any way you want them to look using Elementor. It also has 24 widgets like an Image carousel, Video embedding, Icons, Buttons and so much more which can be used to build an attractive and operational website.
So take time to explore Elementor page builder. The Woo widgets are in Elementor Pro only.
There is a Myth that making an eCommerce store with elegant design is what drives people to buy from an eCommerce store. It is a busted myth i.e, people don’t buy from a store because it is designed flawlessly.
I did what most people do — I concentrated too much on creating a great-looking store instead of actually trying to make a sale.
– Oberlo co-founder Tomas Slimas
You don’t need to spend months designing a perfect website your logo or your colors and fonts. The important thing is to create a store that is operational and put it into the test phase and launch ASAP. Focus on acquiring the customers, and in the meantime, you can experiment with the design.
This article gives you the basics of creating an eCommerce website, Not to mention that all these are free tools. But once you have tested the website you may need more features for your eCommerce store, and you would have to look for other premium options.
You might feel all the progress that you made is a waste. Don’t worry; your work will not go to waste because you can extend the features of your website with some premium options from the same tools. eCommerce website development is now not only for programmers, it’s for anyone really. WordPress eCommerce websites today are created by everyday folk like you and me.
You can get Astra Pro which is a plugin add-on for the Astra theme. It has specialized features for an eCommerce store. You can also get the Astra Agency Bundle which gives you more sites(we saw earlier in Astra Starter Sites) to import from. So don’t need to worry about designing from scratch.
You could also get Elementor Pro which add-on for Elementor free plugin. It gives you 30 more widgets in which there are 4 specialized WooCommerce widgets and other essential widgets such as Price table and Price Listing. There is also an important feature called Custom Breakpoints which helps you to create Mobile and Tablet friendly designs for your site.
We have list of best plugins for WooCommerce. You can create any type of eCommerce store with these plugins.
WordPress platform for eCommerce opens you to unlimited possibilities. It takes some time to get used to. Once you start to understand how this platform works, you can make the best use of it. You can create an eCommerce store that gets you the maximum returns for your time and money. So, keep working with WordPress and keep enjoying all the benefits!
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